Thought leaders: Reitmeier featured in cover story for Energy Star experience

In 2014, Reitmeier was awarded the 2014 Best Contractor to Work For by Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration (ACHR) News. We were thrilled to be recognized by North America’s leading information resource for the HVAC industry!

Energy Star: Designed with the environment in mind

At Reitmeier, we always want to provide our customers with information and tools to ensure they’re making the right decisions for their building. Energy Star provides guidelines that consumers can trust in.

The EPA created the voluntary Energy Star program in 1992 to identify and promote energy-efficient products to reduce harmful emissions into the environment. Since its start in, Energy Star has helped people to save $362 billion on utility bills and has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 2.4 billion metric tons.

Energy Star has been in the news lately due to potential budget cuts to the EPA in 2018—cuts which could eliminate the Energy Star program as a whole. This has stirred conversation among HVAC leaders in the industry as to the value of Energy Star, and weighed in to ACHR—including Reitmeier. We have experience with this tool, and weighed in on it in the recent ACHR article.

Providing the right tools for commercial buildings

We’re committed to environmental sustainability in everything we do. And with energy costs on the rise, creating an energy efficient building should be a top priority for any business.

Half of the U.S. commercial building spaces in the U.S. (450,000 buildings) have tracked their buildings’ energy use through Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager—and some of our clients are a part of this statistic.

Says Reitmeier president, Jeff Nusz, “[The Energy Star Portfolio Manager] is a value-added service at no cost to my maintenance contract customers, and it gives us yet another opportunity to dive down into those buildings and offer them energy-efficient solutions.”

A multi-layered benefit

In 2016, the city of Portland implemented a new policy that required commercial buildings larger than 50,000 square feet to track their energy performance using the Energy Star Portfolio Manager. We saw this as an opportunity to offer the guide as a service free of charge for our commercial HVAC maintenance contract customers.

The Energy Star Portfolio Manager is one of the most powerful tools of the entire program. This tool helps to measure and analyze the ongoing energy consumption of building. Additionally, it helps consumers learn how to reduce their monthly utility bills.

Jeff explains, “[The tool] allows us to have in-depth conversations with clients as well as getting into their budget cycle, because they may not be able to do it this year, but they know they can make improvements in 2018.”

Making comparisons, finding solutions

One of the biggest benefits of the tool is comparing the energy use of your commercial building against a similar one—even if it’s across the country.

“The main benefit with the portfolio manager is you can take your building and get a profile (by inputting the age and type of building),” says Jeff. “You can compare your structure against hundreds of others to see how it’s performing. It allows Reitmeier to dig into those buildings and ones that aren’t performing well and make recommendations for improvements.”

What’s ahead for Energy Star?

While we can’t anticipate the fate of the government-run Energy Star program, we are committed to using whatever tools are at our disposal to provide our clients with efficient solutions and cost savings. If Energy Star is eliminated, Nusz anticipates a privatized tool will emerge in its place.

“In private industry, we know we can be lean, mean, and competitive,” Nusz says. “Introducing competition forces people to really look for efficiency… so it can probably be done more efficiently in the private sector.”

We’re proud to live out our mission of Balance and appreciate our clients who partner with us in sustainability—we look forward to expanding this work in the future!

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For over 30 years, Reitmeier has provided superior commercial HVAC repair, installation, and maintenance services to our customers in the Oregon and SW Washington markets. Our goal is to save you money and maximize your HVAC equipment’s life. We provide our customers with experience, reliability, honesty, and excellence every day. Learn more »

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